.XXX in trouble

The Internet's key agency has agreed to a one-month delay in approving a new '.xxx' domain name after the US government cited "unprecedented" opposition to a virtual red-light district.

Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary for communications and information at the Commerce Department, had stopped short of urging its rejection, but he called on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to "ensure the best interests of the Internet community as a whole are fully considered."

The department received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails expressing concerns about the impact of pornography on families and children and objecting to setting aside a domain suffix for it, he said.

"The volume of correspondence opposed to creation of a .xxx TLD (domain name) is unprecedented," Gallagher wrote to Vinton Cerf, ICANN's chairman. Gallagher said ICANN should take more time to evaluate those concerns.

The chairman of ICANN's Government Advisory Committee, Mohd Sharil Tarmizi, also wrote to ICANN officials urging delay and expressing "a strong sense of discomfort" among many countries, which he did not name. ICANN's board decided to reschedule the matter for Sept 15.

Two in five Internet users visited an adult site in April, according to tracking by comScore Media Metrix. The company said 4 per cent of all Web traffic and 2 per cent of all surfing time involved an adult site. ICM proposed ".xxx" as a mechanism for the $12 bn online porn industry to clean up its act.

All sites using ".xxx" would be required to follow yet-to-be-written "best practices" guidelines, such as prohibitions against trickery through spamming and malicious scripts. Use of '.xxx' would be voluntary, however.

Conservative groups such as the Family Research Council also expressed worries that creating a ".xxx" suffix would also legitimise pornographers.

But ICM chairman Stuart Lawley, in a response to ICANN, pointed out that the agency already offered ample opportunity to raise objections. "We are, to say the very least disappointed that concerns that should have been raised and addressed weeks and months ago are being raised in the final days," he said.